Almost A Beatles Reunion

NAMES & FACES

Paul Mccartney's Oldies Thrilled 40,000 Fans But His New Material Wasn't As Well Received.

May 11, 1993|By Jim Abbott, of The Sentinel Staff

It wasn't a Beatles reunion, but it was the next best thing.

There was cherubic-faced Paul McCartney, sitting at his grand piano and leaning into the final chorus of ''Let It Be'' with a little help from his friends - some 40,000 fans gathered in the Florida Citrus Bowl in Orlando Sunday.

Actually, he gave them two concerts for the price of one.

After making the crowd wait nearly 45 minutes, McCartney rewarded their patience with the Beatles' chestnut ''Drive My Car'' and a dip into the Wings catalog for ''Coming Up'' before launching into ''Looking for Changes,'' a blunt animal-rights-message song from his new Off the Ground album.

That was the first of several instances in which the concert began to take on a split personality, marked by the crowd's nostalgic reactions to McCartney's older songs and its general indifference to his solid new material.

Not that the Off the Ground songs were lacking anything. It's just that they weren't Beatles songs.

So it was that the catchy melody of the new album's title cut dropped with little impact on the stadium.

And despite McCartney's assertions that ''We're out to have a party tonight'' and ''If you have any hair, let it down now,'' the first half of the show never gained too much momentum. Other than an exquisite arrangement of ''And I Love Her,'' McCartney's acoustic set seemed a little contrived.

Things didn't began to jump until McCartney took to his piano for a rollicking roadhouse version of ''Lady Madonna.'' He followed that with an incendiary ''Live and Let Die,'' ''Let It Be,'' ''Magical Mystery Tour,'' ''The Long and Winding Road,'' ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' (punctuated by a scorching solo by McIntosh) and a crowd-pleasing encore of ''Band on the Run.''